Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences 26 (2019) 1129–1133

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Original article

Identification of phytochemical components from Aerva lanata (Linn.)

medicinal plants and its in-vitro inhibitory activity against drug resistant
microbial pathogens and antioxidant properties
Mysoon Al-Ansari a, L.A. Al-Humaid a, P. Vijayaraghavan b, B. Ravindran c, S.W. Chang c, P. Agastian d,⇑,
M.A. Rathi e, B. Balamuralikrishnan f,⇑
a
Department of Botany and Microbiology, Female Campus, College of Science King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
b
Bioprocess Engineering Division, Smykon Biotech Pvt LtD, Nagercoil, Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu 629201, India
c
Department of Environmental Energy and Engineering, Kyonggi University, Youngtong-Gu, Suwon 16227, Republic of Korea
d
Department of Biochemistry, Sri Narayana Guru College, KG Chavadi, Coimbatore, India
e
Department of Plant Biology & Biotechnology, Loyola College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600 034, India
f
Department of Food Science and Biotechnology, Sejong University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study aimed to determine the phytochemical components, microbial inhibitory effectiveness and
Received 15 January 2019 antioxidant properties of Aerva lanata plant extracts. The whole plant showed various medicinal applica-
Revised 23 February 2019 tions in folklore and traditional medicine in various parts of the world. The organic extracts such as etha-
Accepted 28 February 2019
nol, ethyl acetate, chloroform, acetone, water and methanol were subjected for various phytochemical
Available online 1 March 2019
analysis and confirmed for the existence of flavonoids, glycosides, terpenoids and alkaloid containing
components. Alternatively, the extracts were performed for the antibacterial activities against the micro-
Keywords:
bial pathogens and antioxidant properties. Results indicated that, the solvent extracts showed prominent
Aerva lanata
Plant extract
activity against the tested strains. The MIC concentrations of plant were detected from 5 mg/ml to 40 mg/
Phytochemicals ml. The plant extract was highly effective against E. coli and E. aerogenes and the MIC was 5 mg/ml. In
Antibacterial activities addition, the extracts noted promising antioxidant activities. The antioxidant activities were dose depen-
Antioxidant activities dent manner. In conclusion, A. lanata extracts showed that significant major phytochemicals and effective
antioxidant and anti-microbial properties.
Ó 2019 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access
article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction 2017). More than 1000 bioactive principles have been identified
from various medicinal plants and are referred to as phytochemi-
Medicinal plants were applied for the treatment various dis- cals (Dubey et al., 2004). The most important of these bioactive
eases throughout the world. Medicinal plants contain various constituents of plants are alkaloids, tannins, flavonoids, and pheno-
ranges of chemical molecules with pharmacological applications. lic compounds. These phytochemicals are responsible for various
In recent years, botanists, ethnophamacologist and natural- bioactive potentials. Antimicrobial activities of medicinal plants
product chemist are analyzing the available medicinal plants for formed on the basis for their application in developing various
extracting various phytochemicals in the light of emerging various drugs, alternative to various synthetic drugs (Skinner, 1995; Lis-
drug-resistance fungi and bacteria (Selvakumar and Rajasekar, Balchin and Deans, 1997). Infectious diseases are the important
cause of death among populations. About 70% of hospital deaths
⇑ Corresponding authors.
are mainly due to various infectious diseases caused by bacteria,
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Agastian), [email protected].
fungi or viruses (Gnanamani et al., 2003; Al-Dhabi et al., 2018a).
kr (B. Balamuralikrishnan). Antibiotic resistance is a significant problematic and also some
Peer review under responsibility of King Saud University. commercially available antibiotics were seriously associated with
hypersensitivity and allergic reactions. Hence, scientists in a way
to search various naturally available antimicrobial agents in the
wake of disease resistance (Arokiyaraj et al., 2015; Valsalam
Production and hosting by Elsevier et al., 2019). Among the traditional medicinal plants, herbs are

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sjbs.2019.02.010
1319-562X/Ó 2019 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
1130 M. Al-Ansari et al. / Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences 26 (2019) 1129–1133

frequently exploited to treat various diseases and have been docu- bial activity analysis. All experiments were performed in dupli-
mented (Dubey et al., 2004). Plant and microbial derives, or plant cates and average value was tabulated (Rios et al., 1988). The
extracts provides an important source of novel medicinal sub- Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) was evaluated as
stances (Al-Dhabi et al., 2019; Arasu et al., 2019). Antibacterial described previously.
properties of various Indian medicinal plants were highlighted
based on traditional information and attempts were made to study 2.4. In-vitro antioxidant activity
the effect of these medicinal plants against pathogenic fungi and
bacteria (de Carvalho and Ferreira, 2001). In this study an attempt In-vitro antioxidant potential of the extracts were determined
was made to analyze preliminary phytochemical content, antimi- by DPPH method (Simona et al., 2014. DPPH assay DPPH assay
crobial and antioxidant potential of medicinal plant, Aerva lanata was performed by preparing fresh DPPH solution, prepared using
(Linn.). ice cold 100% methanol. Briefly, different concentrations of the
extracts (20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 mg) was mixed with 1 ml of the
2. Materials and methods DPPH reagent and kept under dark and shaking condition. After
the incubation, time, the reaction mixture was subjected to calori-
2.1. Plant material and extraction metric test. Separately, standard vitamin C was used as the positive
control. The antioxidant potential of the extract was determined by
Healthy samples of Aerva lanata (Linn.) whole plant was col- following the formula
lected from Western Ghats, Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, India. It
was authenticated by Botany and Biotechnology Department, Loy- Percentage of the activity ¼ fðabsorbance at blankÞ
ola College, Chennai. The whole plant of Aerva lanata was washed  ðabsorbance at testÞ
in tap water afterward rinsed in distilled water and then air- =ðabsorbance at blankÞg  100
dried, ground into very fine powder at 60 °C for 24 h. Soxhlet
extractor was used to extract the phytochemicals from the medic-
inal plant. About 50 g dried powder was used and five solvents with 3. Results and discussion
polar solvents were used to extract phytochemicals. Finally, the
extracts were evaporated and transferred into a vial for future use. Antibacterial and antifungal activities of medicinal plants are
being increasing in recent years (Raja et al., 2010; Arasu et al.,
2.2. Phytochemical analysis 2017). Presently, researchers are concentrating on the active com-
pound from the natural sources to develop newer drugs. Though,
The extracts such as, ethanol, ethyl acetate, chloroform, ace- the pilot pharmacological study is an important process to achieve
tone, methanol and water were subjected for phytochemical anal- earlier or after the seclusion of the bioactive molecule. Earlier, a
ysis by following the standard methodology of Kumar et al. (2013). variety of A. lanata extracts of different parts have been stated to
possess different medicinal properties viz, antimicrobial activity,
2.3. In-vitro antimicrobial activity antidiabetic activity, antioxidant activity (Kumar et al., 2013). It
has been reported that that the active phytochemical components
Kirby-Bauer method was followed for the determination of are predictable to be more focused in the dried material than in the
antimicrobial activity of medicinal plant (Arasu et al., 2013). Muel- fresh plant material (Deepak et al., 2019; Zhao et al., 2015). In this
ler Hinton Agar was used, and the plates were pre-seeded with study, the extracts of A. lanata revealed activity towards all the
bacterial pathogens and incubated at 37 °C for standard antimicro- tested microbial strains. The extracts such as, ethanol, ethyl acet-

Table 1
Qualitative determination of the phytochemicals present in the A. lanata extracts.

Phytochemicals Different solvents

Ethanol Methanol Chloroform Hexane Ethyl acetate Water
Flavanoids  + + +  
Alkaloids +     
Phenolic compounds     + +
Tannins +     
Steroids      
Saponins  + + + + +
Terpenoids      
Glucosides    + + 

+: This phytochemical is present in the extracts; : This phytochemical is absent in the extracts.

Table 2
Antibacterial activity of A. lanata extracts against various pathogenic bacteria.

Test organisms Antimicrobial activity (mm)

Ethanol Methanol Chloroform Hexane Ethyl acetate Water
P. aeroginosa 9 24 8 7 10 9
S. aureus 11 18 13 11 13 11
E. coli 7 9 8 12 10 11
B. subtilis 10 21 9 11 14 10
E. aerogens 10 14 11 9 10 11

Antimicrobial activity was assessed by determining the zone of inhibition.

 M. Al-Ansari et al. / Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences 26 (2019) 1129–1133 1131

Fig. 1. Antibacterial activity of Aerva lanata (Linn.) extracted with various solvents against the selected bacterial pathogens. (1 = ethanol extract, 2 = methanol extract,
3 = chloroform extract, 4 = hexane extract and 5 = ethyl acetate extract).

ate, chroroform, acetone, water and methanol were subjected for value of A. lanata. Medicinal plants are rich in phenolic compounds
various phytochemical analysis and confirmed the existence of fla- and tannins have been shown to have antimicrobial properties
vonoids, glycosides, tannins, steroids, saponins, phenolics, ter- against various bacterial organisms (Selvakumar and Rajasekar,
penoids and alkaloid containing components (Table 1). Similarly, 2017). A substantial number of glycosides are prodigious medicinal
confirmed major phytochemicals in various extracts of A. lanata worth, all of which are of natural source. In the present study, con-
of stem and leaf (Kumar et al., 2013; Zhao et al., 2015). Phytochem- firmed that glycosides presence in hexane and ethyle acetate
icals are the non-nutritive compounds, are formed by the plants to extracts (Table 1). Nevertheless, observed the glycosides present
defend from insects, bugs and environmental stress factors. These in the methanolic extracts of various parts of A. lanata
phytochemical compounds are the important for the medicinal (Yamunadevi et al., 2011).
1132 M. Al-Ansari et al. / Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences 26 (2019) 1129–1133

different results of antibacterial and antifungal activities of medic-

inal plants mainly depend on various factors such as, climatic con-
dition, environmental factor under with the medicinal plant
growth, the choice of extraction method and the solvent that used
for extraction (Janssen et al., 1987).
The In-vitro antioxidant properties is an additional importance
of the plant extracts towards the development of the herbal based
formulations. In general, medicinal plants exhibited compara-
tively moderate antioxidant activities (Aruoma, 1998; Maia
et al., 2006; Valko et al., 2007). In agreeing to the report of many
researchers, in the present study, the plant extracts revealed dose
dependent antioxidant activities (Simona et al., 2014). Especially,
100 mg/ml concentrations of the ethyl acetate and water extract
revealed respectively 33% 58.5 percentage antioxidant properties
(Fig. 3). This clearly indicated that the phytochemcial components
responsible for the antioxidant potentials might be present in
both the ethylacetate and water extracts. It is predicted that the
Fig. 2. Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) of A. lanata extracted with ethanol total polyphenols content of A. lanata were the major responsible
for antibacterial activity. components for the antioxidant potentials, in addition, it was evi-
denced that different steps of reactive oxygen species (ROS)
namely, as hydrogen peroxide, superoxide anion and hydroxyl
radicals generated from the system were controlled by the vari-
ous antioxidants, thereby preventing the cell damages
(Yamunadevi et al., 2011). Therefore, the antioxidant potential
of the A. lanata were need to be considered for the novel herbal
formulations.

4. Conclusion

The discovery of a phytomedicine will be great interest in vari-

ous treatments against infectious diseases. The results of present
finding strongly indicate the importance of traditional medicine
and this plant extract could serve as very useful source for novel
antibacterial substance antioxidant components. Furthermore, iso-
lation of active metabolites and structural characterization from
Fig. 3. In-vitro antioxidant activities of the extracts of A. lanata. this plant is required to characterize the potent molecule in phar-
maceutical point of view in future studies.

Conflict of interest
The obtained extracts effectively suppressed the microbial
pathogens (Table 2, Fig. 1). In the present study, methanolic extract
The authors declare no competing interests.
of A. lanata revealed antimicrobial activity against various bacteria,
which are in agreement with Chowdhury et al. (2002) reported
Acknowledgement
that A. lanata whole plant ethyl acetate and methanol extracts dis-
played antimicrobial activities. The results MIC concentrations of
This research Project was funded by a grant from the Research
plant were 5–40 mg/ml level. The plant extract with methanol
Center of the Center for Female Scientific and Medical Colleges at
was highly effective against E. aerogenes and the MIC was 5 mg/
King Saud University.
ml (Fig. 2) Medicinal plants showed antibacterial activity against
various bacteria and fungi (Khan et al., 2014; Rejiniemon et al.,
2014). The ethyl acetate extract showed potent activity against
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